


glass

by cuimhl



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, POV Second Person, character introspection, lapslock, non-linear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-24
Updated: 2017-01-24
Packaged: 2018-09-19 16:30:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9450362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuimhl/pseuds/cuimhl
Summary: or: yuri plisetsky in love.





	

             they say love is blind; they also say that true beauty lies within. alternatively, take your pick and point out instead that love is neither blind nor beautiful, but rather a mess of electrical impulses and hormonal changes inducing one particular frame of mind that turns the world into the shade of fresh-spun candyfloss.

 

 

             when you associate an entire universe with the taste of anger fermenting under your tongue, with the clang of knuckles and a brush of sweet breath soured by the dissonant cadence of life alone, changing the beats like an infection of the dj’s mind in a hole-in-the-wall bar, love is this: love is you. love is  _not_ you. love is oranges on the egg shelf, because he knew you hated seeing those empty egg-holders and also that you loved oranges, loved the tang of the rind and especially the pinch of citrus after a prolonged french kiss on the sofa, so it’s a kind of compromise. that is, until he goes out to buy eggs expressly for you this afternoon, as he promises.

(or, in some alternate dimension, he forgets; you kiss on the sofa instead and then on the chair, the kitchen table for a moment or two, and then the bed. that’s an alright dimension, by any standard.)

 

 

             why must love be blind? is it to forget the way (or ignore, whichever realisation strikes first as bright as a lightning bolt thrust by zeus’s hand from frustrated stormclouds) that a flame burns through flimsy, papery skin and leaves pockmarks and bruises both from a scarring youth? or is it to remember that, when he cradles your face in his hands and tells you that you’re beautiful the way you are, love is _blind_ and the moment illumination strikes a match in his eyes, he’ll see that you’re nothing he’s made you out to be?

(oh, the fear - you don’t speak of it but he reads you like an open book with pages between the crevices of your teeth, all scrunched up. dirty secrets.)

(you think that if he reads it all, perhaps it’ll negate the blindness of love and shine enough light on your character that the passion of young love, as it exists now, will make him stay forever.)

 

 

             but in the evenings, he snuffs out the lamp on the bedside table (the animal-print one, because you stared at it for too long and he _knew_ ) and you breathe together as night air congeals into something tangible. you stay awake and count the stars you can see filtering through the curtains (none) and also the ones in your head, your lucky stars, counting them because he’s here with you and by some miracle, he hasn’t left. _yet._

             then you count the myriad ways in which you love him, which are numerous and keep growing by each minute, hour, day, even though you never really had a green thumb.

(but he does, and you know this because he tends to the garden of your heart and makes dead things grow.)

             you love him because he loves you, because he’s somehow refracted your shadow along the pulpy interior of his heart and built a home of arteries, the pulmonary one for your chimney because fumes from yours and his anger must go somewhere. you love him because he dances like no one has ever danced before - not like _he_ did with silver in his hair and silver at his feet, nor _him_ with a soul fashioned from two parts softness and one part ironclad bulwark.

             no, he dances like - like - like -

(no one is watching, or everyone is watching;

his feet have minds of their own and they take you and the audience a-tripping into faery circles and the dizzying confusion of war two heartbeats apart, even though they called _you_ the fairy;

he’s unafraid to be strong but he’s weak on the ice, unable to express except by dancing, so he _does_ )

             - like there are too many things he’s wanted to say in this lifetime, but he’s tired of learning too late, somewhere down the line, that he’s never going to get a chance to say them if he doesn’t say them _now_.

 

 

             it’s june and he tastes like black coffee, like two spoons of sugar and one teaspoon of salt you threw in there for good measure because he chose this day to mock _panthers._

(you pity him for the woeful day he decides to spit at the feet of lions, because you’ll have his bags all packed for him at the door before he gets to finish his sentence.)

(and then you pity yourself, because he’ll no longer be by your side.)

             and then it’s july, and you know what he tastes like already because there are morsels of lychee jelly caught in the breaths you tug out of each other’s throats, grappling at lifelines as neon midnight flushes your skin bright like you’ve been emptied out and refilled with fluorescent jellyfishes. he tastes like boba and he tastes like love, regardless of whether it’s been one month or ten years since you first laid eyes on each other like people in love _do_.

             it’s august and he bandages your knuckles for, you hope, the last time.

             it’s september and you learn all over again what it’s like to be in love, because you might just lose it.

             it’s november, and you’re together, and the fire you stoke together with those eager hands flares brilliantly in its grate, doubles over the crackling logs and peers at you between orange-stained steel, burnishing your hearts as it warms the space in which you exist in this dimension.

(in another one, it’s also november but you’re on the ice together, navigating a new kind of trust as he insists he throw you but you insist it’ll work better the other way around. it’s really a moot point, because they don’t call you the russian fairy for nothing and if the other end of the spectrum is a ballooned belly full of katsudon, like some people during the off-season, you’ll take what you have.)

(in another one, it’s still june and he tastes like caramel instead of black coffee, but you could just be imagining it.)

 

 

             they say love makes a person beautiful; he ponders aloud what it does for people who already are. while you trace his square jaw and awful haircut with eyes that devour, he takes your hands in his (significantly larger, you notice with conflicting, successive moments of unease and delight) ones and tells you why he loves you.

             you wait for it.

             he smiles, and says nothing. you wonder if it means -

(that he doesn’t, anymore, or that there was nothing to love about you anyway)

             - but then he kisses you on the forehead, brushes your hair back. whispers in your ear,  _everything._ the cheesiest line you’ve heard since the wedding of two idiots last summer, but you fall for it because love has softened you. the bitterness of rage that cut as deeply as it resonated, with all the self-entitled audacity of an old friend, gentle as it simmers and blooms, like fresh-spun candyfloss, between the cracks in your brittle ribcage to turn your brokenness into a work of art.

 

 

             he says he loves you because you’re angry, because you take the world by its horns and refuse to let it go even if you swallow the dust on your tongue in paralysing terror; such is the stupidity of humans when they most need their intellect. he says he loves you because you suck oranges when you think he’s not looking, straight after telling him that you were sick of them, please stop buying them for me, it’s annoying.

             he says he loves you because you dance like everything he’s seen before, and will ever see, thereby turning your shadow from a hologram of yourself into the very fabric of his universe. and he uses different words, because he doesn’t want you to throw up on the turkish rug, but you know he means it all the same.

 

 

             love looks good on you, he says. you think so too. on him, of course; not on you.

             you will concede, however, that your eyes shine a little brighter, a little less like ice chips and more like lapis lazuli (not gold-veined but green, such is the spring rousing in your heart now), held up to the sun with one eye shut. if it blinds you, that’s alright; love _is_ blind. that’s why you’ll pretend you don’t fear he’s still going to leave you one day, because he’s promised to be here for this one, and the next one, and all the other ones heaped upon the horizon.

             anger made you bold; love makes you strong. strong enough to whisper confessions between his shoulderblades right before the self-hatred overwhelms you, right before he ducks both your heads underwater to drown out your demons, gazes swimming in subaqueous, turgid and bloated reflections of him and you.

             trusting that he’ll haul you out before you drown too.

 

 

             it’s june and this is an alternate dimension, or it could be the original dimension, or both could be one and the same because his touch still lights you up like a christmas tree, and the black coffee on his tongue is as sweet and bitter as succor has been to you all your life.

             because you love him and he loves you,

(and what more do you need right now?)

 

**Author's Note:**

> if you made it this far...thank you! i know it isn't the most direct of writing pieces, but i have strong feelings about yurio being in love & also had to get some writing out of my system.


End file.
